We consider the efficiency of queries generated by XML to SQL translation. We first show that published XML-to-SQL query translation algorithms are suboptimal in that they often translate simple path expressions into complex SQL queries even when much simpler equivalent SQL queries exist. There are two logical ways to deal with this problem. One could generate suboptimal SQL queries using a fai...

With the development of Web 2.0, a lot of content is nowadays generated online by users. Due to its characteristics (e.g., use of jargon and abbreviations, typos, grammatical and style errors), the user-generated content poses specific challenges to machine translation. This paper presents an online platform devoted to the pre-editing of user-generated content and its post-editing, two main typ...

At the request of the USG National Virtual Translation Center, the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language conducted a study that assessed the role of several factors mediating transcript usefulness during translation tasks. These factors included source language (Mandarin or Modern Standard Arabic), native speaker status of the translators, transcript quality (low or moder...

The advent of social media has shaken the very foundations of how we share information, with Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin among many well-known social networking platforms that facilitate information generation and distribution. However, the maximum 140-character restriction in Twitter encourages users to (sometimes deliberately) write somewhat informally in most cases. As a result, machine ...